As Louisville gets ready this week to consider the city's first significant redevelopment project outside of downtown, battle lines are being drawn over the size and density of the proposal and whether it fits in with the surrounding neighborhood.

Plans for the long-awaited redevelopment of the vacant Safeway store on South Boulder Road go before the Louisville Planning Commission on Thursday for a first hearing. A contingent of residents unhappy with the three apartment buildings -- containing a total of 195 units -- and 10,000 square feet of retail space being proposed at the 5-acre site are expected to show up at City Hall for the meeting.

Anonymous fliers condemning the project have been distributed in neighborhoods around the languishing Village Square shopping center in recent weeks. They state that the "fix is in" and accuse the city of pushing an overly dense and tall development "down our throats with the least community oversight or involvement."

The fliers also state that the city will lose nearly $100,000 a year providing services to the new community.

Louisville City Councilman Hank Dalton said it wouldn't be proper for him to comment on the details of the project, but he said he didn't appreciate the implication of city corruption laid out in the fliers.

Advertisement

"My concern is that they basically were saying derogatory things about the city staff that I thought were unfounded," Dalton said. "They essentially were abusing city staff and saying they were in the developer's pocket."

Attempts by the Camera last week to contact those who distributed the fliers were unsuccessful. And messages left with Jim Loftus, the Boulder-based developer behind the proposed project, went unreturned.

Dalton said any variances Loftus might be seeking to put in buildings taller than what Louisville's code permits -- the plan calls for one of the five buildings on the site to be four stories tall -- would have to go through a rigorous public process before any approval is granted.

"The developer understands the risk of bringing forward a proposal that has a request for variances," he said.

So far, the planning department staff suggests that the Planning Commission recommend approval of preliminary redevelopment plans for the Safeway site. One of its conclusions is that big-box retail or a grocery store at the site, which was built in 1978, is no longer viable with the proliferation of more desirable retail locations elsewhere.

Its report states that the Loftus development could generate $2.5 million in new retail spending in the city.

The Safeway has been closed since May 2010, and several of the stores and restaurants directly to the west have experienced a significant downturn in business since.

Louisville Planning Director Troy Russ said Loftus deserves as fair a hearing as any other applicant and that variance requests for density and building height are allowed under the planned unit development process.

"We have to make sure the city's interests are protected but also the private landowner's interests are protected," he said. "We have to walk that line."

Russ said the public is free to attend the two Planning Commission meetings on the proposal scheduled for this month as well as a meeting before the City Council later in the spring.

Dalton said there is a ways to go -- all of it in the public eye -- before any final decision would be made about the project. In the meantime, he hopes support for and opposition against the project will be aired in an open and respectful way.

"I'd like to think that reasonable people are going to get together and talk about their differences," he said.

Mike Mulhern, of Denver architecture and planning company The Mulhern Group, describes a retail and high-end apartment development plan for the old Safeway site at a meeting in Louisville in June.
(
MARTY CAIVANO
)

Knights claim first team title behind victories from Schacht and WuDENVER — As Fairview athletic director Terrin Kelly took in the scene Saturday afternoon at Gates Tennis Center, he turned to principal Don Stensrud and mentioned they were going to have to do some rearranging in the school's trophy case. Full Story

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story